Knife

I grew up in a major city in America. I started smoking when I was 15 – I was hanging out with older kids and a lot of them smoked and I thought they were really cool. They wore really punk clothes and hung out on the street and did graffiti and listened to cool music. And I was like, ‘I wanna be just like them’ and smoking was part of that. I was like, ‘Oh I just wanna fit in’ and cigarettes seemed cool, and I thought it made me look cool. 

I know that smoking because you think it looks cool isn’t great. We were taught about cigarettes in school, the same as other drugs. And my parents, they’re very anti-cigarettes. My dad has a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and my mum says that she’s allergic to cigarettes. So, I had a lot of, like, anti-smoking growing up. But back then when I started smoking, the packaging in the States was really different – it wasn’t the ‘do not smoke’ and gross pictures like it is here. Everything there is advertised loudly, and cigarettes were cheaper – I could just get together like $10 and buy a pack, although I didn’t really smoke that much to begin with.

The main difference is that it was quite a normal thing – I could walk up to someone who was smoking on the street and ask them for a cigarette. I would bum a lot of cigarettes from strangers. When I tried doing that here, my friends were like, “What are you doing? Nobody does that. Like, homeless people do that. Don’t ask strangers for cigarettes.”

In the States, I tried not to, but I could make judgements about someone’s personality based on the kind of pack they were smoking. Certain people smoke Marlboro, certain people smoke American Spirits or Newports or whatever. Here, you don’t get to do that as much. It’s more if someone’s smoking tailored cigarettes versus rolled cigarettes. I smoked American Spirits Mellow. They had a bright, bright yellow package, and I used to say,”I’m smoking sunshine-flavoured cigarettes”. When I go back to visit any time, I’ll buy a pack of the yellow American Spirits just to reminisce.

Tried to stop smoking?  

There’ve been periods of time where I’d smoke a lot less, like only have 1 or 2 cigarettes a week for a 6-month period. That’s been happening lately in the past couple of years. I quit for about 6 months last year. That was my most serious attempt - I turned 25 and in my brain I was like, 25 seems like a good time to quit. Smoke for a decade. Cap it.

I didn’t use anything to quit, I just stopped. And then, I was like weirdly healthy – I wasn’t drinking caffeine and I got a new job volunteering and the social aspect kicked in. There were other people smoking, it was more fast-paced for me so I was drinking caffeine and I like to smoke when I drink coffee. So, I started smoking again. 

I always try to quit for my birthday, but it’s not like a big deal. I quit for my birthday this year and managed to not smoke the whole time over lockdown.

The hardest bit about quitting is I really like to smoke while I’m driving. I just think it looks really cool. This makes me feel real bad, but I just like the aesthetic. I’m in my car and I play really loud music and I like to drive around and smoke cigarettes.

My friends who have quit have quit for their health. I’ve put a lot of effort into thinking ‘smoking makes me look cool’ and they’re like, “No, it’s gross.” And that’s fine because I know that’s how they’ve quit – reinforcing that thinking. I know objectively that quitting is a good and healthy thing to do, even though I don’t wanna do it right now. 

I just assume that I will be able to quit when I really want to, and I haven’t really felt like quitting. Like, I’ll stop when I get like a sore throat. If I get sick, I’m able to not smoke for like 2 weeks or so and that’s usually fine. I just assume I’ll stop like when I’m 30 or when I own a house, like things that don’t feel real right now – I assume they will happen someday.

I’m not sure how much of this is like lying to myself - am I just pretending, ‘Oh, I can put them down and pick them up whenever I want and this is fine’? I don’t know how realistic this is, but I don’t think I’m that addicted to nicotine. I don’t need to have one right when I wake up and I can sometimes just forget to have one on me. Like, maybe I won’t smoke this week and I won’t get crazy.

Once, I was in a place where I couldn’t smoke for a while and I thought I needed to use like patches or lozenges. I could tell that I was quite addicted to nicotine then, because some days I would forget to put my patch on and I would just be so irritable and awful. And I was like, why is this happening? And then I thought, oh, I didn’t put my patch on this morning. So I noticed it then, but most of the time I don’t. 

At the moment, I’m smoking 4 or 5 a day. But last week it was upwards of 10. I was feeling stressed. I spent way too much money on cigarettes last week – that’s when I know. I’ll usually buy a 25 pack and ideally that would last me a week.  I don’t think it actually does – I think it lasts me maybe five days. It depends on how I’m feeling. 

Tried vaping?

I tried vaping for a little while, but I don’t like it. When I quit, I will just stop smoking. A lot of my friends vape and they’ll let me try their vape sometimes - it’s just totally unappealing. It made me cough, ’cause the cigarettes have something in them that numbs your throat and the vapes don’t have that. I might try vaping if I really wanted to quit and I still needed nicotine, but that’s just not a thing.

I think right now I’m the only one among my friends, like in my immediate friend group, that smokes. Sometimes people will have a puff of my cigarette, but I think I’m the only one who is currently buying cigarettes. Everybody else vapes. Like, my friends got married and they had vapes matching their outfits. It was like, vape wedding.

Lockdown

I didn’t smoke through lockdown. But my friend who I live with, she started smoking for lockdown – so that was fun. And then lockdown ended and she quit smoking and I feel really bad, ’cause I started smoking again. She’s doing it for health reasons, which is why I feel bad. I was just really like antsy and reckless, so as soon as lockdown ended I took a long drive to visit friends in another city – the whole way driving and smoking. 

At the time I told myself, I’m only gonna buy one pack. I remember a friend being like, “Hey, isn’t that your third pack? Weren’t you just gonna have one?” I was like, “Yeah, but now I’ve decided I’m smoking again.”

Smokefree 2025

I do notice that the cigarettes are getting more expensive. I don’t think there’s much point in it. Maybe some people quit smoking because it’s more expensive. But for the people who feel like they need to smoke, it’s just making their lives more difficult.

Smoking is bad. It’s not a good thing - people shouldn’t smoke. But, it’s what we have right now. I don’t think it’s very fair to take smoking away from people if they’re smoking for stress or, whatever it is. Like, if someone’s smoking because their life is difficult and that’s how they de-stress, you need to offer something else to replace smoking. That’s usually my reaction when people say that people on the benefit shouldn’t smoke, and things like that. 

I would like to see a campaign to reduce smoking that is not just focused on smoking. Give people an alternative, not just an alternative kind of nicotine, but, I don’t know… it would just cause more stress to remove the cigarettes and not do something else about the situation. Like, reduce smoking but raise the minimum wage. Or, reduce smoking but put more money into community groups or help pair up things that you can do to, like, manage your stress.

For people in extra marginalised positions with higher levels of stress, there’s not enough help. Some people smoke for the social aspect or to look cool, but they also smoke for the sense of community… but I think mostly it’s the stress. I know that on average we use more drugs than the general population. We have data on that now in the Counting Ourselves report.

I tried to quit smoking. I was dating someone and they wanted to quit smoking. They said, “I'm not going to be able to quit if you're still smoking.”  So I thought, alright, I will give it a go. I went 3 days without a cigarette. Then I was like, oh, I’ll cut back. I’ll try not to smoke in my car because it’s my secret place to smoke and I’ll see if that has an impact.  And I messed up and bought a pack of cigarettes. So, I left them with a friend and they gave me, like, a daily allowance to try and help me. But then the person I was dating broke up with me anyway. So, I was like, oh, I'm just gonna keep smoking then, and that’s been fine.

Last year I dated someone who had been a heavy smoker for years and switched to vaping. They were not a fan and made that clear. They’d go,“Pooh, you smell like cigarettes.” So, I was smoking less around them but they didn’t ask me to quit. I don’t think I’d date someone who didn’t smoke who said they wanted me to quit.

I got sick over the weekend. I had a sore throat and was sniffly, so I only had 1 a day. But usually I have 3, 4, 5 a day, once I leave the house. I smoke when I'm going places.

Intention to stop smoking

I wasn’t enthusiastic about quitting smoking. Rationally, I know it’s a good idea to not smoke. And I like to support other people in making healthy choices.

I don’t really have an intent to quit, but my mum is moving here and she really, really hates cigarettes. So, I've got it in the back of my head that I can keep smoking, but I need to stop smoking in my car or try to not have it reek of cigarettes because she’ll give me a lot of shit for that. I have a long history of fights with my mum about smoking. But it’s a stressful time in the world. I think I'm allowed to smoke.

My ex-partner used patches and gum when they were quitting. I don’t like patches. I was thinking maybe gum could be a thing for me but I haven’t looked into it. I haven’t talked to my doctor about quitting.

Vaping

Vaping, for a lot of people, is their way to quit smoking. That makes me hesitant to support taxing vaping. Why would you make it harder or more expensive to quit smoking?  But it seems like more young people are going for vapes rather than cigarettes. If tax is something that would discourage it then that seems like a good idea. But I think there’s a better way that they could discourage people from vaping – like community support with more focus on the causes of smoking and other ways that people can manage their stress. 

Price of tobacco

I feel it in the wallet. I can still do it, but I have to budget. The tobacconist I buy from is a weird shop, full of cheap things like $1 cans of coke, and plastic knick-knacks like 21^st birthday accessories and bachelorette party stuff.  They also sell the cheapest cigarettes. I do also buy at the supermarkets or the petrol station.

Stop-smoking support for the Rainbow community

I thought about quitting months ago because my friend, who was wanting surgery, had to quit smoking to get her surgery.  She found out she couldn’t have the surgery, so she started smoking again. It was a big let-down and she was like, oh well, there's no point now. 

The fact that it’s straight and cisgender people in the majority setting healthcare standards and deciding to make smoking harder, that also makes it harder if you want to quit smoking – to go by their standards. It would be better to have queer perspectives with queer people saying, “This is why I decided to quit smoking and it’s for my own reasons, not because an inherently biased or oppressive healthcare system has told me to.”

What would work better for us is having queer people say, “This is what worked for me, and this is my framework that fits in with a queer perspective based on queer experiences.” There’s patches and gum and the general stop-smoking support, but there's not a specific trans peer support to quit smoking. That would be something queer people would want to access more. It wouldn’t be like just the healthcare system that’s caused a lot of trouble in the past, being like, here’s another thing that you should do and here’s some more rules that you should follow.

I think big surgery is an incentive to quit smoking. It makes it harder to heal if you’re smoking. But it’s not people quitting because they want their health to be better – they're quitting to meet a requirement, and that’s different.

My smoking hasn’t changed that much. My first smoke is when I leave the house.

I don’t intend to quit.

The price hasn’t gone up that much. I think I’m giving away too many cigarettes because I’m buying more. I’m giving them to homeless people and friends. People will always offer to give me coin, but I’m like, “Oh no, you can just have one,” and then it’s like half my pack, and I’m like, “Oh, hang on.” 

Other people’s attitudes about smoking

I was smoking a lot more, like off and on, during the Christmas holidays. When I visited my mum, I wasn’t smoking and on the days that I didn’t see her I would smoke quite a lot to make up for it. So, it probably evened out to the same.

I had every good intention of stopping smoking in my car 2 weeks prior to seeing her. But I was stressed with the holidays and driving around, so I kept smoking in my car. I just, like, emptied the ashtray and vacuumed the car as best I could. Of course, she noticed that my car smells a lot like cigarettes, but she didn’t make a big deal out of it.

She’s moved to New Zealand. At the airport, she gave me a hug and she’s like, “Oh, you’ve been smoking.” And then we went to the car, and she was like, “Oh, you’ve been smoking in the car.” When I put on my leather jacket – because leather holds the smell of cigarettes – and she was like, “Oh, your jacket smells like cigarettes.” It’s not so much of a scolding, it’s a commentary. It just causes some avoidance for me. I know she’d rather I didn’t smoke. I don’t care to talk about it with her, so I’m just like, “Oh, yep – anyway…”. But it did mean that I was more anxious, probably because we had all of these things to do and I couldn’t smoke to even it out. Not being able to smoke around her made me quite fidgety.

I think she’s seen me smoking once in my life. It’s easier to not smoke around her because I know she wouldn’t like it. She would probably ask me to not smoke in front of her. Even if I ran around the corner and had a cigarette she would know what I was doing, and I would come back and smell. She would express distaste, but I don’t think we would argue. 

Smokefree 2025 - Plain packaging

I haven’t noticed anything different. All the packs are like a gross grey. It’s like a dark greenish grey.  They have the pictures on them and there’s a little strip that says what the brand is. I don’t remember it not being like that since I’ve moved here.

I decided very last minute to give up cigarettes for Lent – 4 weeks of only smoking on Sundays. I thought Lent was a little bit more non-denominational because I’m not a Catholic, and the people I know who are doing it aren’t Catholic. But yeah, it’s just a Christian thing. There’s 2 weeks left of Lent to go. I intend to continue smoking once Lent is over. But it’s been interesting.

Giving up smoking for Lent

I got some nicotine gum because I was just fully against vaping. And I was having maybe 3 pieces of gum a day and that was fine – then there was some drama in my friend group, and I got really stressed out and said, “Fuck it, I’m going to buy a vape.” So I bought a vape and it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. So, I have been vaping but still smoking on Sundays, and it’s a surprise to me.

I was having some drinks with a friend and really hanging out for a cigarette, and he had a vape. So I was like, “Let me just have a go on your vape, I just need some kind of nicotine.” And it wasn’t entirely bad, so the next time I was stressed out I thought I would buy a vape. It’s kind of weird because smoking will make me feel a little bit sick now, on some days. The cigarettes taste worse, which I am sad about. Probably because I’m not smoking and I’m getting some of my sense of smell back. I think vaping probably still interferes a little bit with my taste and sense of smell, but I can definitely smell and taste more than I was, which is nice.

So, I found myself wanting to go for the vape more, but I always have a countdown to midnight on Saturday nights – when it becomes Sunday, I start having cigarettes. I usually have my first cigarette at midnight on Saturday and then I’ll have 4 or 5 on Sunday. Yesterday, Sunday, I was vaping alongside smoking. I went out Friday night and I couldn’t smoke, so I was described as, like, seriously vaping.

I had the gum before I had the vape. I’m not using the gum. It was a little bit better because I didn’t crave the gum. I would just notice that I was suddenly, like, very grumpy and be like, oh I haven’t had any gum, maybe I should have a piece of gum. But now I crave the vape. It’s like wanting a cigarette, but I want like the feeling of a cigarette but it tastes like peppermint and it’s not so harsh on my throat. Which is weird. I never thought I would be a vape person. I don’t know if I like it. It’s just always seemed less cool.

Health professional support to stop smoking

I’ve probably seen one ad for a quit programme, because a friend of mine on Facebook has decided to quit smoking after like, 30 years or something. She’s been talking about what she’s using, but I don’t remember the name of the programme or anything.

I don’t think my doctor even knows that I’ve given up smoking for Lent.

Have you heard of low-nicotine cigarettes?

Like Lights? I’ve never bought a pack of Light cigarettes.